Monday, January 26, 2015

Some districts haven't yet held their championship meets, but - with just a little research - you can get a look at many of those that have. Wouldn't be right to post just some, so I'm not posting any. Sorry.

Friday, January 23, 2015

A Walk in the Woods, starring Robert Redford and Nick Nolte, will premier today at the Sundance Film Festival. More here.

It's a film version of Bill Bryson's best-seller on his AT thru-hike attempt.When an aging travel writer sets out to hike the 2,100-mile-long
Appalachian Trail with a long-estranged high school buddy, the duo learn
that some roads are better left untraveled.

The late Richard Quick has made it into the Texas Sports Hall of Fame. More here and here.

Quick, an all-Southwest Conference swimmer at SMU, won a record 13 NCAA
swimming titles as coach at Stanford, Texas and Auburn. He also was the
head coach of the U.S. team in three Olympics and an assistant coach of
the U.S. team in three other Olympics. He died in 2009.

Thursday, January 15, 2015

City of El Paso building first of two 50m pools. Story here.The pool is one of the
quality of life bond issue projects that voters approved in 2012. Under
the bond issue, a second 50-meter pool is slated to be built in the East
Side.

Recent and upcoming changes to National Collegiate Athletic Association
rules -- including a new pilot program that will provide travel expenses
to the families of basketball players who play in national championship
games -- are rife with “serious Title IX complications,” a panel of
gender equity experts said here Wednesday.

"She's been an inspiration through high school, I had her through high
school and college and just seeing what she did with kids then and
seeing what she has done with kids now, still to this day is pretty
amazing," said Casey Pacheco, Ball's first recruit and current AHS swim
coach.

Friday, January 09, 2015

Bobby has decided to put his career on hold and set out on the adventure of a lifetime! Starting AT thru hike in about a month! Catch/Keep up here and here.

Scott Scofield has volunteered to compile and post this year's high school state meet call-up lists for swimmers, coaches, and parents interested in finding out before the UIL posts their official list.

I appreciate all the help I had doing the 2013 & 2014 lists. Thanks in advance for providing Scott with results and support.

Here's the site where he'll be posting that info (along with some other meet results):

The oldest pool in Texas, Deep Eddy began not as a pool but as a
privately owned swimming hole along the banks of the Colorado River, as
this 1920s-era postcard shows. Students and locals alike flocked to the
Deep Eddy Bathing Beach not just to swim, but also to rent cabins, ride a
zipline, go down a slide, and watch shows like Lorena’s Diving Horse—a
steed and rider plunging dangerously off a 50-foot diving platform.

Minnesota/Duluth non-renewed their women's hockey coach, Shannon Miller.Last month, Miller’s $215,000 contract wasn’t renewed, with the
university saying a shrinking budget no longer allows for such a salary.
But, with the men’s hockey coach still employed and earning about
$20,000 per year more than Miller, some are asking whether the firing
was based on her gender as much as her salary.

“Coach Miller was a highly successful coach who has graduated her
players, earned the respect of her community and peers, and hasn’t
gotten in any trouble or in a scandal,” Nicole LaVoi, associate director
of the University of Minnesota's Tucker Center for Research on Girls and Women In Sport,
said. “I have never in my career in studying women coaches ever heard
of a coach like that not being retained because they were being paid too
much. It’s kind of a game-changer."In her sixteen (16) seasons as the Bulldog head coach, the program has been in the NCAA tourney ten (10) times, reached the Frozen Four seven (7) times, and won the national championship five (5) times.Read the entire article, along with some interesting comments, here.In a statement earlier this month, Josh Berlo, the university’s
athletic director, called Miller’s departure a “financially driven”
decision, adding that UMD is “not in a position to sustain the current
salary levels of our women’s hockey coaching staff.” Newhall called the
justification "weak," saying it's "not hard to see that firing a female
coach under the guise of being paid too much where there are other, less
successful coaches who are paid more" is gender discrimination.

Mark Nagel, a professor of sports and entertainment management at the
University of South Carolina, said a contract not being renewed because
a college can no longer afford to pay a coach's salary is "very rare."
Whether the gender disparity makes it illegal or not is a more
complicated question.

The decision was made at the time because the school's facilities did
not allow it to compete at a national level and its geography made
recruiting elite swimmers difficult. Building a new facility, it was
decided, would be too costly.

AAAA-NE head coach Lou Walker was the Orange head coach at the time. His letter to the editor takes on Carlson and his slanted story.

While I would agree that my discussions with Daryl at the time were
relative to the age of the facilities I would disagree that there was
any discussion relative to "geography and recruiting elite swimmers."

Gross replaced the swim programs with a women's hockey team.

At the time, NostraButton reminded readers* that The 'Cuse would be hunting for lady rinksters outside the state (and country). N.Y.S. girls' high school hockey just wasn't up to supplying a D-I program with the required talent and numbers.

When the decision was made to scrap swimming and add women's hockey, it was supposed to help with Title IX numbers (and it has), make the overall athletics program more "competitive" (it hasn't), and save money (it hasn't even come close).

The current S.U. women's hockey roster lists twenty-five (25) players. Eleven (11) are Canadians and two (2) are New Yorkers.

Funding player scholarships alone (at the NCAA limit of 18, times an annual cost of attendance of nearly $60,000) costs the university around a million bucks each year!